Jellyfish Spy Drone

Next time your crazy uncle comes back from his seaside vacation ranting about being tracked by a six-foot jellyfish with a camera for an eye and a bundle of wires and electrodes wrapped under its bell, don’t be so quick to chalk it up to sunbaked paranoia.

A partnership between the U.S. Navy and Virginia Tech College of Engineering has, in fact, developed such a creature: a military robot jellyfish drone.The $5 million robo-jelly fish, named ‘Cyro,’ weighs 170 pounds and measures up to 5-foot-7 — about the size of an average man.

So far only a prototype, this sci-fi replica of one of the earth’s oldest brainless animals has its own 600-gallon swimming pool. The Navy hopes that one day, a fleet of these cyber-gelatinoids will help keep American’s safe — at least until the enemies of freedom dispatch their own legions of pygmy seahorse attack drones.